humanity n: a state of grace
by sweetwatersong
Summary: There are the things that go bump in the night, and there are the people who hunt them. Natasha Romanoff is a vampire who's never been exposed. Clint Barton's the Slayer sent to destroy her. They'd kill each other, if only someone else wasn't trying to kill them first.
1. Prologue

**humanity (n): a state of grace**  
story rating: eventually R  
genre: paranormal AU  
characters: Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff  
story summary: There are the things that go bump in the night, and there are the people who hunt them. Natasha Romanoff is a vampire who's never been exposed. Clint Barton's the Slayer sent to end her. They'd kill each other, if only someone else wasn't trying to kill them first.

dedication: Many, _many _thanks to Bee, the world's most patient beta who has spent the last month making this into a far better story. I wouldn't be doing this without you.

chapter: Prologue  
chapter rating: PG  
chapter warnings: light Clint x Natasha (prologue only)

Prologue

The late afternoon sun was warm even through her leather jacket as she pushed open the door to _Cattle Call_, ducking into the shade of the diner. As her eyes adjusted to the indoor light, she spotted Louie behind the counter, wiping down the glasses with the hole-filled rag he always used whille the cigar he always had wobbled between his lips. Smoking might not be allowed indoors, but there were no laws against wishing. What caught her attention, or more accurately _who_, was the stranger sitting in one of the counter chairs; the stranger glancing over his shoulder to give her a friendly but appreciative once-over.

Natasha found herself starting to smile, pleasantly surprised by the interest. His gaze wasn't the ogling stare she normally received from men, and some women; this one, at least, seemed more interested in her face than her breasts. Smart man.

"Two specials to go, Louie," she asked as she walked up to the seats. The heavy-set chef grunted, his eternally unlit cigar wavering, and disappeared into the kitchen. She glanced over and caught the stranger still looking at her, his burger and fries going untouched. Amused, she leaned against the scratched red counter, not bothering to slide into a chair. "Surprised a girl can eat so much?"

"Surprised he has a special," he replied with every trace of honesty. "I didn't see any on the menu."

"That's because you're from out-of-town, and his special is a trade secret."

"That you've just revealed," he pointed out, and she grinned, years of habit keeping it from revealing too much of her teeth.

"You're right. Now I have to swear you to silence or kill you, and that would be such a waste." God, she'd forgotten how good it felt to just talk with someone. The flirting didn't hurt either. She didn't need this, didn't crave human contact – at least, _this_ kind of contact – but like walking in the daylight, it reminded her that she wasn't just a creature of the shadows.

"Because I'm too pretty to die?"

Oh, he was good-looking; she'd give him that. He also held himself like a martial artist or fighter, not slumped in his seat but relaxed, ready to react if he needed to. Who would be expecting a fight in quiet little Hearthford?

"Because I just got my nails done," she answered, knowing her fingernails were curled out of sight and laughing inside when he looked for them.

"Can't waste a good manicure," he agreed.

"_Finally_, a man who understands."

The stranger grinned, settling back so he could face her better, and the warmth inside Natasha's belly cooled at the sight of the facial tattoo that had been hidden before.

There were three kinds of people who had symbolic tattoos in this world: the religious, the idiots, and the hunters. This man wasn't the second and didn't seem like the first, which left only one option.

"I'm Clint," he said, pushing his plate towards her. His hands were rough and callused, used to fighting, and small scars littered the skin all the way up to where it disappeared under his jacket cuffs. "Have a fry."

"Talia," Natasha replied, taking one. "So what brings you to town?" It wasn't hard to continue acting relaxed, acting casual; for Talia, this wasn't an act at all.

"Just passing through; there's an awful lot of Montana to go across before you get anywhere."

She shrugged in response. He could be lying, but it was God's honest truth that Montana had more empty space than it knew what to do with. And the chances that he was here for her, that someone had managed to piece her history together and track her down here… well, those chances were so small they were almost impossible.

"That's what you get for not flying."

"What, and leave my baby behind?" He asked, acting outraged. She raised an eyebrow, intrigued.

"That Skylark out front is yours? Nice car, although I prefer the Mustang myself."

"Please tell me you didn't get a cherry red one." The hunter actually looked so pained at the thought that she grinned despite herself, lips stretching just wide enough to stay on the safe side.

"Pitch black, I'll have you know. The only sensible color for a muscle car." That got the flash of indignation she was looking for.

"Are you saying that purple looks bad?"

"I'm saying that purple looks like Barney," she answered. "All you need to do is add some green spots and small children might start asking where you keep your magic bag."

He snorted and pulled his plate back.

"That's it; we're done. I can't flirt with someone who insults my car."

So he was willing to admit what they were doing. It had been a long time since she had met anyone willing to be so upfront, let alone a hunter who would kill her in a heartbeat if he realized what she was. But you didn't get second chances when you were a monster; all you got were endings.

"You don't know what you're missing out on, Clint." She shook her head. _More than you know._

"Maybe next time." But there was something besides humor in his voice that made Natasha wonder if he really meant that, and decide that he had.

It was a shame that she would be leaving here in four days and never coming back.

"I'll buy the fries then," she said anyway, and the warmth in his eyes made her wonder, briefly, what their lives could have been like if they weren't what they were.

Maybe they would have never met; maybe they'd be happy; maybe playing at being a human made her hope too much.

Outside, the cloud cover finally rolled back over the sun and the light entering through the _Cattle Call_'s windows dropped appreciably.

"It's a deal." Clint held out his hand and she took it without hesitation, the calluses from his weapon-work rough against her skin. "And I solemnly swear to uphold the secret of Louie's specials, cross my heart and hope to die."

She smiled, amused that he had remembered. Then again, he was a hunter, maybe even a Slayer, and they didn't forget much.

_Don't remember my face, Clint. Be glad that you're not hunting me, or the death you swore on will come much quicker than you thought_.

But "I'll see you then," was all Natasha Romanoff said, letting her fingers linger in his until Louie put a plastic bag down in front of her. "Thanks," she told the cook, and pulled a twenty from her pocket. She set it down, grabbed the handles of the bag, and gave Clint, a hunter and her natural enemy, a wink. "I'll cover his dinner too."

He didn't say 'thank you' but laughed and, as she was walking out into the cloudy afternoon, called, "I like your nails, by the way."

Natasha turned, gave him a grin that carefully covered her canines, and left without looking back again.


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter One  
_The Appearances of Things are Deceptive_

dedication: Happy birthday (according to LJ) to my beta Bee, who deserves all of the cake and praise. :)

author's note: I apologize for the delay in getting this up, but I was out sick for a week. Comments and constructive criticism are welcome!

i.

The cool Montana night was a far cry from the warmth of the day. The heat had long since seeped out of the ledge he was lying on, leaving his gear to insulate him from its chill. There was almost no breeze; fortunate, he thought, staring through the scope at the house below. It would make this a lot simpler. Now if only the star of the show would show up...

If the Scamp and his 'clues' were right, he should be dealing with a succubus. It wasn't that Clint didn't trust the overly eager kid - although he didn't - but if not for the tip they had gotten two day ago, he would have dismissed the supposed trail as more fiction than fact. There were monsters out there clever enough to hide their tracks, though... For a while, at least. When you killed long enough, you made mistakes, and in a world of hunters and Slayers, one mistake would get you killed.

It looked like this succubus had finally made hers.

He let out a slow breath, keeping the rifle trained on the bedroom hundreds of feet away. He'd been out here for hours already, and he'd be out here for hours more if the ghoul was a no-show tonight. That was fine by him; he was, among many things, patient. It wasn't a trait most Slayers appreciated; their profession was far too hack-and-slash for that. But if it bagged him the bitch feeding off of this executive - and, if the Scamp was right, several others - the nights he might spend waiting would pay off. Even if he'd rather be elsewhere, like chatting Talia up in the one bar the nearby town had. He wouldn't mind swinging back through Montana again...

_C'mon, sweetheart...  
_  
As if his thoughts had summoned her, he caught movement in the corner of the scope. But it wasn't a succubus materializing over her victim, pulling herself to him through their mind link; it was the master bedroom door opening.

_What do we have here?  
_  
For a second he wondered if it was Sheppard's daughter. Background had noted she had a history of night terrors; even if it meant scaring off the succubus, he wouldn't begrudge her the comfort of her father's arms. He had nightmares too. Being a Slayer meant doing things that haunted your dreams for a long time afterwards.

It was no young girl who walked into the room, however. The woman who entered certainly moved with the predatory grace of a succubus, but her comparative over abundance of clothing and her normal means of breaking and entering made two strikes against the case. Intrigued and annoyed, Clint followed her progress across the thick carpets. If this turned out to be Sheppard's mistress, and not an actual incident, he was going to make the freckle-faced hunter wannabe eat his words. Literally.

Even with the enhancements on his nightscope, it was hard to make out any details. There s something almost familiar about the way her hair was brushing her cheekbones...

Shit.

_Talia?_

His mind backtracked, trying to connect the amused woman in a diner with the clearly sensual one crossing to the king-sized bed. Her easy smile hadn't hinted that she was sleeping with someone else, and her flirting certainly hadn't either. The second dinner must have been for her mark, this Mark Sheppard. He sorted through his surprise and confusion, tracking her through the scope. Maybe this really was nothing more than a man fucking his mistress - the way that she was straddling him now, leaning forward, certainly suggested that.

The fangs she revealed as she did so said otherwise.

_Stay.  
_  
The compulsion rolled out from the woman a hundred and fifty yards away, catching him entirely by surprise. That was the terrible ingenuity of it, the silent snare evolved to take prey and hold them helpless: you never sensed it coming.

Clint tensed, or tried to. His body's failure respond told him all he needed to know.

Vampire.

Shutting down his alarm, he tried to handle what his eyes were telling him. He was known as Hawkeye for more than his tattoo. If he couldn't trust his sight, he couldn't trust anything at all. So what did he see? The woman he had flirted with hours ago was a vampire. There were two things about that idea that made everything in him balk. Clint picked the easier of the two, the urge to pull the trigger warring with the compulsion's order, and watched helplessly as Talia neatly tucked her hair behind an ear and bit into Sheppard's exposed jugular.

_Jesus Christ._

_Daylight. How the __fuck__ was she able to go out in daylight?_

It hadn't been a trick of his mind, seeing someone else's face on this monster. She had used the exact same gesture in the diner, the muted light outlining her hair like a halo. Her infection shouldn't have let her be up during the daylight, let alone out walking in it. Was she something else? Some new hybrid?

Was she immune?

_No._ He quashed the thought, ruthlessly rationalizing it. It had been late afternoon and fairly clouded at that. She had waited until the clouds had returned, he could see now. That was why she hadn't stayed longer, chatted more.

Which brought him to the worst of the two issues he had with the impossible creature taking her sweet time drinking from Sheppard.

He had liked her. Jesus H. Christ, he had _flirted_ with her. The monster in his crosshairs had been human – all vampires had been – but more importantly, she had retained some of that humanity, enough to get by with him. Enough to play his interest. Either she was a terrific actor, or…

Frozen on the hill ledge, watching a monster in human shape feed from a monstrous human, Clint wondered just how much of the woman she had been was left.

After several endless minutes, Talia lifted her head up and stilled, listening to some sound he didn't have a prayer of catching. She rocked back onto her heels, leaving Sheppard propped up against his pillow, the covers eased back. That was when Clint caught the rise and fall of the executive's chest and realized he was still alive.

_You've got to be kidding me._

Vampires could kill in seconds, maybe minutes, if they wanted to make it slow. But to leave a victim alive after all the time she had been feeding, Talia couldn't have been doing more than sipping.

_What the fuck are you doing? What __are__ you?_

What Clint would have given at that moment to have his talisman on and the freedom to move, the ability to stalk down there and catch her. Not kill her, not yet, but to put answers to his questions.

To put a rest to his nightmares.

Up until this point, he hadn't blamed himself for leaving his talisman off. He had been hunting a succubus, not a vampire, and fending off compulsions wasn't part of dealing with sex demons. But when he saw Sheppard's daughter creeping through the doorway, tears on her face and a blanket in one hand, that changed.

_Don't make me watch her die. I don't care what else happens, just don't let her die. Please._

Clint didn't know who he was praying to. Most days, he never did.

"Daddy?" He read her lips as she rubbed her eyes, sniffling. How had she broken the compulsion? What had she done that he couldn't do?

Of all nights, why had she woken up on this one?

Talia had slipped off of the bed while he had been fighting the implacable command. Now she bent down and scooped the four-year-old up, Clint waiting with every heartbeat to see her tear Lily limb from limb. Waiting to see proof of how little humanity she had left.

"Daddy's _sleeping,"_ the vampire 'said', putting a finger to lips that had been slick with blood a minute ago. "What's wrong?"

The girl replied, her face hidden from view as she hid her face against Talia's shoulder and left her neck, her fluttering pulse, within inches of the vampire's fangs.

_Please. Please, I'm asking you…_

"Oh, a bad dream? But you're okay now, all right? You're okay," Talia murmured, closing the bedroom door behind her as she stepped out into the hall. Moments later, the signals Clint had been sending his body rushed through. Only his control kept his finger from pulling the trigger, his body tight as a wire and set to fire. One bullet, a bullet made for a succubus no less, wouldn't slow a vampire down. And he wasn't going to take the shot and possibly do what the monster hadn't.

If the child died tonight, it wouldn't be by his hand.

i.

Clint took a deep breath, slowly relaxing the muscles that had been held immobile against his will. When he had regained control over his body, checking to see if the cold had stiffened his joints, he took one last moment before easing his way off of the ledge.

The game had changed, and so would he.

Clint leaned against the trunk of his car, eyes on the night sky as the dial tone rang in his ear. And rang. And rang.

_Click._

"_This is Phil Coulson, SHIELD, Oregon base. Leave a message after the tone."_

The Slayer found Andromeda in the myriad of stars and waited for the beep.

"Coulson, when you get this, drop everything and call me. I've got a Tuscon on my hands."


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter Two  
_In which things heat up... literally._

thanks to: The wonderful beta Bee!  
dedication: For cybermathwitch, as a gift for a bad week, and because Clint seems to cooperate for her sake.

ii.

Three nights. Three nights of watching, waiting, one eye pressed to a night scope and a finger around a trigger. Three nights that Talia had fed fromher victim for long minutes, an illuminated watch on Clint's right wrist and a talisman on his left. Three nights that she hadn't drained Sheppard, lost control, or walked out into the sun. Three nights, and he was still no closer to answers.

Not ones he accepted, at least.

Restraints engraved with runes bumped against his leg, steel and silver and powerless while he climbed through the forest. Imbuing objects with magic was suicidal and next to impossible, regardless of what the charlatans said, but imbuing them with _power_was another story entirely. The brace-like cuffs would keep her dormant, keep her body a corpse when he hauled her out of the house and to his car, to the motel. If for whatever godsforsaken reason she managed to wake up in transport back to the Oregon base, they would be of no more use than regular handcuffs.

He just had to get them on her while she was dead to the world. Literally.

In front of him, barely visible through the trees surrounding the mansion, the edges of the sky began to lighten. The people in the house would be an hour or so away from waking, the vampire already lying in whatever lair she had chosen to be hidden from the sun and discovery. Not from him, though. Not this morning.

Clint paused just before the forest gave way to the house's manicured lawn, considering the distance. A knife, gun, talisman, and restraints; that was all he had to go up against an inconceivable vampire. Rick would have added luck to the list, but Barton didn't believe that luck had anything to do with it. Not good luck, anyway. He'd left a note in the Skylark's glove compartment, meant for Coulson. If things went wrong tonight, Phil would look for a trail.

He intended to leave one.

_Here goes nothing._

Reassured by the weight of wooden band around his wrist and the weapons in their holsters, the Slayer moved out into the open and towards the house.

For a rich man, Sheppard had a shitty alarm system. Clint rigged it easily, rerouting the wires in the casing with a flashlight clamped between his teeth. Most people underestimated how much of his job involved mundane matters like this; they thought it was all hacking and slashing and monsters. He'd give them the monsters, at least.

_Got it._

Satisfied that it wouldn't go off and alert anyone to the break-in, he took the flashlight out of his mouth and swept the beam over the hardwood floor, the walls decorated with art and antlers. If the floor plan made any sense, the basement door would be…

_Here._

Clint opened the door quietly, easing down the stairs into the cooler air. Couches, chairs, a wide-screen TV; over in the corner, a wooden rocking horse that had to be the daughter's. He glanced into the open doorways he passed, looking for what he needed. A small area, closed off, where she could hibernate without being found…

_Right under their noses. How does she get away with that?_

Vamps lived near human populations; they had to. From sheds to abandoned properties, and even houses if they made it to a year, got to be old and had control – but with people? And without killing them? He'd never heard of one.

Like that was any excuse, though; he hadn't heard of one that could walk in the sun, either.

_What are you?_

Clearing the open section and its rooms, Clint headed down the short hallway that led to what had to be guest bedrooms. She wasn't anywhere else, and unless she was bold enough to hide on the first or second floor...

_And that would be my luck, wouldn't it._

He turned the corner.

Talia stared back at him, surprise in her gray eyes as she halted in the doorway of a bedroom.

For a moment they looked at each other, clearly taken aback. There was nothing of the supernatural about her, no sign of the thing she was. She could have been the woman he had flirted with in a diner on a slow Thursday.

Then her lips thinned, revealing the fangs that were the mark of her kind, and she launched herself at him.

The fight in the light from his dropped flashlight was brutal, brief, and nearly even. She moved fast, almost faster than he could, and she was fighting to kill. The talisman on his wrist deflected any compulsions, though, and he had no qualms about inflicting a serious injury to get her off and away from him. Too close for the Sig, too quick for it; he needed one hand to wield the Attuni knife and force her back, the other to catch the blows and kicks she threw mercilessly.

They fought in silence, their grunts and ragged breathing the only sounds giving away their struggle. He took two punishing hits to the ribs before she tried to kick him into the wall, only pulling back before he could grab her leg and use it to pin her down. She lashed out as she withdrew, fingers digging into his wrist and sliding to clamp around the brace holding his talisman. When they broke apart, the curved ends of the brace did too – and the talisman pulled away in her grasp. Clint cursed silently and focused on the vampire whirling away from him, none of the humor in her expression that had been there only twelve hours ago.

The real monster had come out to play.

_Two can play that game._

Without a talisman, his best bet was to try and see what she would do. Literally. He blinked twice, putting the conscious effort into it that activated his tattoo, and watched as the left half of the world suddenly swam with color. A deep crimson now lay over the undead woman facing him, sparks of oily green flying out of the predominant color. It was darker than he would have guessed, and duller, too. Maybe the weight of the lives she had taken made the difference. If he was right, if he had figured out how she could even _exist_, she had more blood on her hands than almost any vampire he had ever heard of.

_Giving Dracula a run for his money, Talia?_

She finished turning and centered herself, balancing on the balls of her feet. He mirrored the movement, resigning himself to pinning her down with the knife and hoping she didn't lose enough blood to die before he had her in the restraints. He wasn't going to kill her, not yet, not when he had so many questions.

There was always time for that later.

Something glinted in the darkness, a wave of that weirdly fluorescent green. It appeared out of thin air and cascaded over Talia's aura, sliding off in glittering sheets that flaked and vanished.

_What the fuck?_

The hiss was so soft, he almost missed it. They froze at the same time, caught in a tableau of waiting, of trying to understand what was going on.

_I'm not the one doing anything, sweetheart –_

Between one breath and the next, the hallway around them burst into flames.

Reacting on instinct, he turned off his sight before the magic could burn it out. It had to be magic. Hell, two seconds and the fire's warmth was already reaching out to stroke him like a friendly lover, caressing his face and stretching down his throat to burn his lungs. The hiss was growing louder, almost a dull roar now, and in the room Talia had left the flames were coalescing, forming a massive head.

_Oh, shit_.

He and Talia stayed where they were for a heartbeat, caught in the light and heat and shock of the inferno now surrounding them. Then she flashed past him as if he was no longer a danger, vanishing down the burning hallway. She was right; right now, a Slayer was far less of a threat than a Salamander.

The huge jaws gaped open as it stirred, tongue flicking out for scents. Clint took an involuntary breath, regretting it as soon as he did, and shoved the knife into its sheath. No knife, made by the Attuni or otherwise, was doing to do any good now.

The heat from the Salamander's breath followed him through the basement, dropping away when he emerged from the stairs onto a ground floor already engulfed in flames.

_You've got to be kidding me._

An Elemental powerful enough to burn two floors at once would easily eat the top floor as well. There were bedrooms up there, and people up who would be trapped inside, would burn alive. For a little while, at least.

The walls next to him groaned, another blast of heat washing over him as the Salamander wormed its way upwards. Clint pulled the edge of his jacket over his face, trying to keep the scorching air out of his lungs, and plunged up the wide staircase to the second floor.

There was no ash drifting through the air, no smoke to turn the hallways into a maze; with Salamanders, there never were. He could hear the gleeful crackling of its massive body as it twined through the rooms he ran past, could see the dancing flames that rolled across the floor ahead of him. No, there wouldn't be smoke or ash or rubble until it had finished its meal – but wood and drywall weren't the only things the Elemental ate.

He kicked down the first door he came to, pushing in just in time to see the lizard swallow the sleeping woman inside as it passed by. She came awake screaming, thrashing in the covers as fire spread over her until she was covered… and still she continued to scream, the sound shrill and agonized and not coming from the corpse left behind in the burning bed.

In the room next to hers, someone else began shrieking.

"God _damn_ it!"

Barton turned away and ran, knowing there was nothing he could do and hating it. Who had summoned the fire lizard? How could it be this massive?

Who had murdered these people?

Barely able to keep his eyes open, he didn't see the other survivor before he crashed into them. Only the fact that he grabbed her kept her from being knocked into the reaching flames. In the eerie light of the Salamander's body, Talia recovered her balance and twisted out of his grasp, something cradled in her arms.

No, not something. _Someone_.

Over the chorus of screams, the house groaned.

"Watch out!" The Slayer seized her shoulder and pulled her forward as the Elemental's head emerged from the nearby room, turning lazily towards them. Backtracking wasn't an option; to the left, the stairs were crumbling away. The only way left was forward.

This time the vampire didn't shrug off his hand as they pushed through the banked inferno, every step another chance for the floor to give way underneath them. Fifteen yards; ten yards; five yards with the tongue of flame licking their backs. Then they were through the window, out into the blessedly cool air, and the ground rose up to meet them.


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter Three  
_Мир праху твоему, trans.: Rest in peace._

thanks to: Bee and Cybermathwitch for their thoughts and patience. :)

author's note: I apologize for not updating this in over two months. All I can say is that I will do my best to stay on schedule in the future, and if you'd like, in the meantime I can post snippets of post-humanity (n) stories to make it up to you!

i.

She couldn't think, couldn't breathe, couldn't register anything but the next step and the refrain of _not again, not again, not again_ running through her mind.

She curled up around the small body in her arms, taking as much of the impact as she could. It hurt, of course it hurt – alive or undead, pain had always been a constant – but the shock and a wave of heat couldn't stop her from holding onto Lily, from pressing her face into the singed curls and wishing, with all of her infected heart, that this had never happened.

That a fire hadn't torn apart a little girl's life for a second time.

A thin moan forced Natasha into motion, terrible and almost inaudible over her own harsh breathing and the sound of footsteps and two sharp gunshots. She pushed herself up slowly to avoid jostling her burden, folding her legs so she could cradle Lily with the least amount of contact. Pressure on a burn wound was excruciating, no matter how gentle or well-meant the touch was. She should know.

"Daddy…"

Natasha's heart wrenched. Tears were sliding over the seared skin on Lily's face as she wept, mercifully close to unconsciousness. Even knowing she was probably too far gone to hear anything, the vampire forced herself to take a shaky breath before replying.

"He's okay," she told Lily, her voice almost level. The hoarseness could have even been from the scalding air. "He's fine. You're fine."

"H-hurt…"

She swallowed; pulled her mouth into a smile.

"I know. But not for long, okay? Daddy's coming to get you. You'll be fine."

There was a lonely hope in the shadowed eyes trying to focus on Natasha's face as the vampire wove a compulsion over the fading girl. _No pain. No fear. Sleep._

And Lily did.

She couldn't breathe, couldn't get enough air into her lungs, couldn't force her rib cage to press against the body she was holding. Desperate, aching, she closed her eyes and tried to think past the heavy grief in her chest.

_Not again. Not again. Not her, please, Graceful One._

But such prayers were useless, helpless against the awful lightness of her burden.

After an uncountable length of time, Natasha straightened and opened her eyes, turning her head to meet the gaze of the hunter by her side. They looked at each other for a long moment, the light of the fire playing over the gun in his hands, the sides of their faces.

"Bullets won't do anything against a Salamander, especially of that size," she said, her voice perfectly level.

"It was worth a try," the hunter replied, lifting a shoulder in a minute shrug. "Kept it from coming after you when you landed."

She shivered involuntarily. That explained the heat wave, then.

"Thank you." They were words she had never said to a hunter before, at least not one who knew what she was. After what he had seen – and how much _had_ he seen? – there could be no doubt about that.

He considered her for another moment, and she couldn't tell what was going on behind the set lines in his face. She could force him to tell her, now, if she wanted; to put the gun away, or to put in his own mouth…

"You're welcome."

Natasha was faintly surprised. Courtesy was one thing, even between natural enemies, but he sounded as though he meant it. Unwillingly, perhaps, even unintentionally – she harbored no illusions about whether he would have helped her if she hadn't been carrying Lily – but without regret, at least.

Her flinch at the thought of the child must have shown on her face, because the hunter frowned.

"It didn't get you, did it?"

"Vampires don't have souls for Salamanders to eat, hunter," she told him, the matter-of-fact tone an instinctive cover.

"You don't believe that," he said slowly, and Natasha blinked, startled.

"But you do."

The human's gaze travelled to her burden, then the massive inferno that had been a home not ten minutes before.

"Yeah, I did," he admitted, staring at the flames, and she didn't look away from his face until the girl in her arms sighed once… and was still.

Natasha inhaled, struggling to control her rush of emotions, and held her breath until she could let it go with a blank face. Only then did she rise to her feet in a fluid movement, cradling Lily's body with detached care as she turned and walked past the expressionless hunter, back to the house.

The warmth was welcome, driving off the last traces of dampness on her cheeks. A massive head emerged from the flames as she approached, gauging her with slow intelligence. No Elemental could resist the temptation of another treat, soulless or not. And children _were_ the sweetest.

She stopped just out of the reach of the flickering jaws, feeling the air boil as it dipped down towards her. Ignoring it, she bent and pressed a kiss to Lily's blistered forehead.

"Мир праху твоему," she murmured, and took the last step forward.

The Salamander unhinged its jaws with deceptive ponderousness, taking the corpse she held out like an offering. Natasha lowered her arms and wrapped her hand tighter around the hunter's wooden band as fire spread over the tiny body hanging in midair.

"I'm coming for your contractor," the undead woman told it, staring into the burning scarlet flames. The fire lizard swung its head away, more concerned with the arms and legs dangling from its mouth than her incomprehensible words. She watched it until it vanished into the house, her fingers aching.

It had been hard to hold onto anger when the weight of her sins had been weighing her down. Now, though? Now things were different.

When she turned away, the look in her eyes would have scared even an Elemental.

"If you want to live, don't come after me," she said as she moved past the hunter.

"And if I want to come with you?"

Natasha didn't stop, far beyond feeling surprise or intrigue or anything but the grief-stricken rage welling up in her chest.

"Talia."

She halted, holding herself perfectly still.

"Natasha," she replied in a clear voice. "My name is Natasha." Then the ire running through her veins broke loose and she turned, all precise movements and grace. "And her name was Lily."

And his silence seemed to say that he had known.

He was a hunter, a gun in his hand and a vampire's undead heart within range, beating on under a burned shirt covered in blood and serous fluid. They called him Hawkeye because he saw with a clear line of sight; because he saw the shot and took it, no matter the consequences.

Clint put the gun back in its holster and looked up at Natasha.

"So what do we do now?"


End file.
